And it is looking increasingly likely they will once again leave the city to play their ‘home’ games elsewhere.

Owners Sisu and the leadership of the club have been talking about the Sky Blues leaving the Ricoh Arena for years - and that is now a frightening reality.

Today is the deadline for the club to give the English Football League clarity on their plans for next season.

At this stage, it is hard to see how that can be at the Ricoh Arena given the clear and consistent message from landlords Wasps and the silence from Sisu who show no signs of relinquishing their right to pursue legal action.

We all remember the pain of the club’s exile in Northampton in 2013 and as things stand, history will repeat itself and the Sky Blues will play their last game in Coventry on Sunday, April 28.

That prospect is as horrific as it is real.

Save Our Sky Blues - a CoventryLive campaign

To avoid it, someone needs to blink first in the impasse that has developed between Sisu, and the Coventry City companies it controls - and the landlords they have embroiled in a legal action that has the potential to bankrupt them.

If, as seems likely, neither side backs down - it is left to the English Football League to either kick City out of the league or allow them to play outside of Coventry.

Neither is a palatable option.

Yet again, 136 years of history risk being thrown aside in a bitter dispute that has no end in sight.

Yet again, we can’t sit back and simply watch it unfold, we have to make our voices, your voices, heard.

The city of Coventry needs and deserves a thriving football club and all parties need to understand that there will be plenty of blame to go around if the club is homeless and moving away from its fan base - or worse come May.

No one will avoid the flak.

We want you, the Coventry City fans, to spell out exactly what this club means so everyone knows what is at stake and what will be lost.

So tell us what Coventry City means to you and help Save Our Sky Blues.

Here, we have tried to summarise the roles of the key players - Sisu, Wasps, the English Football League and Coventry City Council - and what they can each do to prevent this unfolding catastrophe.

And we have a call to action for all football supporters to Save Our Sky Blues.

Fans

The victims in all of this, watching their club kicked from pillar to post, to Northampton and back again.

Many will feel powerless as the club’s stay in Coventry ebbs away but you have a voice, we can give you a voice.

Together, you can make one almighty noise.

Tell us what the Sky Blues mean to you and what you would lose if they left Coventry, or were kicked out of the league or worse.

How to get involved

Write it down and send it in to us or use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram using #SOSB, send us a selfie of yourself (in your City shirt is best) and tell us how you feel about your club.

Read More

Ricoh Arena Row

Sisu

Coventry City’s owners clearly have a right to defend their interests through the courts but that is now in direct conflict with any duty to act in the best interests of the club and its fans.

They need to make a decision on what to put first and must do so knowing what many City fans think.

The people running the football club on a daily basis have made what they called “strong representations” so we can only assume that even their own club staff think they should drop the legal action.

They surely can’t deny that to the untrained eye their legal action looks (at this stage at least) fruitless in the face of so many defeats.

Sisu’s bought a club that had already been ravaged by years of failure which had driven it to within minutes of administration.

In buying a club that was a tenant, they also inherited the option to buy back the half share of the Ricoh Arena operating company from the Alan Edward Higgs Charity.

The failure to make that the first deal of their ownership is a factor - but not the only one - in ensuring the club will almost certainly never own the ground that was built to be its home.

It is impossible to ignore that - with their repeated claims of a new stadium that has never materialised - the stewards of your club have been consistently talking it out of the Ricoh Arena for years and that now looks increasingly and horrifically likely to happen.

The move to Northampton was widely reported to be a financial disaster for a club whose main income is ticket sales.

Sisu must calculate how much they stand to lose if they have to again subsidise a club divorced from its fan base.

How they can end this: Drop the legal action.

Likelihood to blink: Not likely given their consistent approach to legal action.

Read More

Judicial Review 2

Wasps

The then-London rugby club bought the stadium company knowing the painful recent history with Sisu and Coventry City Council.

Now it is the subject to a legal action by its tenants which has already cost it around £400,000 in a year and which would potentially bankrupt the club.

While many reasonable people may forgive Wasps for not wanting to deal with a tenant in those circumstances, they need to understand that the people of Coventry might not be feeling reasonable or forgiving if the Sky Blues leave Coventry again - or the club’s very future is threatened.

They must surely consider the value of taking the moral high ground, while they will also have to consider the cost - financial and otherwise - of an ongoing attritional relationship with a tenant.

While it is clear that stadium sponsorship rights should be more lucrative with both clubs playing there, it is difficult to see any brand wanting to be attached to a toxic relationship.

As difficult as this may be for the rest of us to accept, Wasps’ own calculations could lead them to the conclusion that they are better off without their tenant and the legal team that comes with them.

How they can end this: Drop their demand for an end to legal action and give the club another rent deal.

Likelihood to blink: Not likely. How could they negotiate with City, Sisu, rugby agents or anyone else if they back down from such a strong and public stance?

EFL

The English Football League have come under fire from City fans on a regular basis since they allowed the club to up sticks to Northampton.

They are now saying that City won’t be allowed to do that again, with club chairman Tim Fisher saying they have been told they must play home games within six miles of the city centre.

The EFL have the power to kick City out of the league - and this could be done at an Extraordinary General Meeting of Clubs on April 25 - which raises the prospect of the club dying - quickly or slowly - in non-league and we implore them not to do this in the event of no deal at the Ricoh Arena.

However, that would mean relenting and allowing the club to once again shift from its home city and, in all honesty, this is no real solution at all.

It might keep the club alive but it would be on life support from the second it pitches up for a repeat of the Sixfields nightmare.

The move to Northampton was a financial disaster for the club and divorced it from much of its fan base.

Another exit would see another group of kids not joining their dads at their local club on matchdays, making it even easier for them to grow up supporting one of the Premier League big boys.

Without a new generation of supporters, the club’s future is once again at risk.

How they can end this: Let the club leave Coventry if they can’t play at the Ricoh Arena, though this is just the least worst of two awful options with potentially dire consequences.

Likelihood to blink: It is hard to believe that club chairmen really will vote to kick a fellow club out of the league knowing the consequences could be dire.

City Council

For many people, there will always be a host of questions asked about the council’s role in this saga - from the early intervention in the stadium project, the Tesco land deal, the 50-50 stake in ACL, talks with Preston Haskell IV, ACL’s role in the club going in administration, the sale of ACL to Wasps - much of which has been and continues to go through the courts.

The latest question surrounds the pledge that the sale of the stadium to Wasps would not harm the future of the football club.

It is easy to envisage that nugget popping up in a court battle in the future but expect the counter argument to be that City had five years after the sale to build either their own much-talked-about stadium, or a decent relationship with their new landlords.

We should all remember the council’s duty is to protect the interests of its taxpayers - and where these have arguably been in conflict with the interests of Sisu, the football club and its fans, the council had to put taxpayers first - and have spent £1million of your cash defending its decisions in court.

The question now is what can the council do to influence the current deadlock over the Ricoh Arena and it’s hard to argue that they can do all that much.

They can plead with Sisu, Wasps and the EFL and they certainly should do everything in their power to lobby and facilitate a solution - but they have no decision-making role.

The bosses and elected leaders at the council must be aware that if this ends badly for the football club, the council’s role will come under renewed scrutiny and many of those football fans are also taxpayers and voters who will be in a mood to blame everyone involved.

How can they end this: They are not key decision makers in the current stage of this saga.

Likelihood to blink: Should be doing everything they can to help as this city needs a thriving football club.